


brave new world

by TolkienGirl



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Lucy is precious and deserves to be happy, Post-Narnia, with a happy brave face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 17:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6575158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody pities the happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brave new world

Lucy only cries at night.

She smiles in daylight, squints at the sun and pretends its radiance doesn't hurt her eyes. (It was to Susan that He gave the sun. Susan, who dazzles in a different way now, very beautiful and very bright, but no longer gentle).

Lucy smiles, and Lucy is happy because being happy is just another piece of being valiant. There is no valiance in despair, and there is no room for despair in Lucy's life.

(At night, it is quite a different thing. Night is no one's, and so no one can see).

To be valiant is to forge onwards, not letting go of the past so that she may pass easily into the future, but bearing it with her. Lucy sees Narnia in a broken, battered world, even when it hurts.

She sees Narnia most in children—in the way their eyes light up at the changing of seasons, _hears_ Narnia in the scattered laughter that falls like smooth sea-pebbles on the dreary pavements. (It was to Lucy that He gave the sea).

Children believe, and children hope, and they have not yet been taught not to dream.

Some of them are even too young to really remember the war.

It is when the laughter fades that she doubts—that she wonders (perish the thought) if Narnia was real. She was the one who believed, after all. The one who began it.

There is no one in whom she can confide, no one to reassure her. Susan doesn't believe anymore, and Edmund and Peter need Lucy's faith, just like everyone needs her happiness.

It's a complicated truth, and a bit of an ugly one, always being happy. People need it, but they don't always appreciate it. Sometimes they (not her brothers—never them—) think her daft, as though she doesn't know pain, _can't_ know it, behind all those smiles.

Nobody pities the happy.

(And perhaps she doesn't need it, doesn't want it—that pity. After all, she only cries at night).


End file.
